The funny thing about Google as a Gatekeeper is that it's already a Gatekeeper via search. Even in a world where there are no 30% distribution shares, most prod

The funny thing about Google as a Gatekeeper is that it's already a Gatekeeper via search. Even in a world where there are no 30% distribution shares, most products still live and die by their ranking on search results for either brand searches or long tail keywords. It's not uncommon to see brands buying their own name as keywords just to rank #1 on search results pages that are more and more fully loaded with ads above-the-fold, including competitors who buy keywords against well know brands. The Play store is just additional icing on the cake. They're not losing sleep over the one unicorn exception known as Fortnite. 99.9% of other companies do not have the word of mouth to overcome the various gates, whether it's Google or Apple or Steam.